Faculty Library Resources

Literature Search Support

Librarians can assist with resident or faculty research projects in variety ways: as an advising consultant who helps direct researchers in their search or, in the case of an extensive research project, as a member of a research team.

As a consultant to a student researcher, faculty researcher, or research team, the librarian will:

• Provide guidance with search terms, strategy, and database selection on a variety of literature searches including, but not limited to, program review, grant proposals, committee work and review articles.
• Advise researchers about the possible publication type of review articles (e.g. scoping review, systematic review, etc.) and thus the scope of the search needed.
• Provide guidance on relevant guidelines and standards for conducting, reporting, and appraising research.
• Provide support in bibliographic management software (e.g. EndNote, Zotero, etc.) to organize retrieved citations.
• Librarians will conduct some limited and exploratory searches for the researcher as appropriate.
• Acknowledgement of the librarian in any publication is appreciated

As a member of the research team and co-author, the librarian will:

• Locate existing reviews on the topic of interest.
• Help determine the publication type of the final article (e.g. scoping review, systematic review, etc) and thus the scope of the search needed.
• Collaborate on determining the research question and related eligibility criteria.
• Provide guidance on relevant guidelines and standards for conducting, reporting, and appraising research.
• Develop the search strategy in consultation with the research team and conduct or participate in performing the literature searches.
• Identify sources of and search for grey literature, as appropriate.
• Maintain records of all searches.
• Collaborate in manuscript writing and editing, including the methodology section for reviews.
• Provide support in bibliographic management software (e.g. EndNote, Zotero, etc.) to organize retrieved citations.
• Suggest tools and techniques for study screening, de-duplication, and organization of information retrieved.
• Provide guidance through the review process.

Meet with a Librarian

Setting Up Search Alerts

Take advantage of the tools available to stay on top of the latest literature.  Most database include the ability to create individual accounts, save searches, and set up alerts that will update you whenever a new article related to your topic of interest appears in the index.  Settings such as your preferred email address and alert frequency can also be adjusted.

PubMed

1) Login to your MyNCBI account

2) After performing a search, click on the "Create alert" link below the search bar

3) Adjust the settings to set up the frequency of alerts and report types, then save the search.

Google Scholar

1) Login to your Google Scholar Account

2) After performing a search of interest, click on the "Create alert" link in the lower left-hand corner

3) Save the alert.  *Note Google Scholar doesn't have as many options to adjust the frequency, you can only adjust the number of results to receive per alert.

Web of Science

1) After performing a search click on the "Create an alert" button, located on the left-hand side of the page

2) Login to your WOS account, if you have not already done so

3) Name your search and adjust the specific alert settings according to your preferences and save the search/alert.

4) If in the future you would like to delete or edit any alerts, access your list of alerts from the "Searches and alerts" drop down menu at the top of the page.

Journal Impact Factors

Journal Impact Factors attempt to objectively look at or measure the influence or ranking a particular journal has in a specific subject area.  These factors help inform libraries of which journals should be included in given subject-area collections and often influences authors  when deciding on journals to submit their work.  Although, impact factors can be informative, researchers should understand their limitations; as aggregate counts, individual articles in any given year can dramatically change the impact numbers positively or negatively.  It is also important to be aware that an article found in a high impact journal does not guarantee that the article itself has a strong impact or that an article published in a low-ranking journal has had minimal impact.  The impact factor is typically determined by the number of times the articles in a journal are cited in a given time period, averaged by the total number of citable items (i.e. articles): as a consequence, individual articles can stand out considerably depending upon their own influence and impact, regardless of the specific journal they are published in.

For more information about journal impact factors please see:

1) Sharma, M., Sarin, A., Gupta, P., Sachdeva, S., & Desai, A. V. (2014). Journal impact factor: its use, significance and limitations. World journal of nuclear medicine, 13(2), 146. https://doi.org/10.4103/1450-1147.139151

2) Garfield E, & Garfield, E. (2006). The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association, 295(1), 90–93. https://doi-org.roseman.idm.oclc.org/10.1001/jama.295.1.90

Journal of Citation Reports and Google Metrics

Two of the more prominent impact factors are found the in the Journal of Citation Reports (JCR) and the Google Scholar Metrics

Journal of Citation Reports is one of the original publishers of impact factors.  It can be accessed at this link, through the Web of Science database by clicking on the link at the top navigation bar:

or accessed directly from the "J" resources found in  Roseman Library's A to Z database list:

Once in the JCR, users can search or browse by journal name or by category.

Google Metrics

Google Scholar metrics use a trio of metrics called the h-index, h-core and h-median defined as:

"The h-index of a publication is the largest number h such that at least h articles in that publication were cited at least h times each. For example, a publication with five articles cited by, respectively, 17, 9, 6, 3, and 2, has the h-index of 3.

The h-core of a publication is a set of top cited h articles from the publication. These are the articles that the h-index is based on. For example, the publication above has the h-core with three articles, those cited by 17, 9, and 6.

The h-median of a publication is the median of the citation counts in its h-core. For example, the h-median of the publication above is 9. The h-median is a measure of the distribution of citations to the articles in the h-core.

Finally, the h5-index, h5-core, and h5-median of a publication are, respectively, the h-index, h-core, and h-median of only those of its articles that were published in the last five complete calendar years." *

*https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/metrics.html#metrics  accessed February 2021.

The Google metrics are located within the separate Google Scholar search engine and found at this link: https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/metrics.html

Orcid ID

An "ORCID iD is a free, unique, persistent identifier that you own and control—forever. It distinguishes you from every other researcher across disciplines, borders, and time. You can connect your iD with your professional information—affiliations, grants, publications, peer review, and more. You can use your iD to share your information with other systems, ensuring you get recognition for all your contributions, saving you time and hassle, and reducing the risk of errors."*

If you have any questions about setting up a Orcid iD account or want more information, please feel free to contact a member of the library staff or view their FAQ guide here.

*https://info.orcid.org/benefits-for-researchers/ accessed February 2021.

Open Access Publication

Benefits of Open Access Publication:

1) Easily share your research with the world.  Authors still own the copyright to their work when publishing in an open access journal but they are now able to share their work anytime, anywhere, and with anyone.

2) Get noticed. Most open access journals are indexed and text-mined by prominent academic indexes and search engines, and by having the articles openly accessible they become more discoverable to students and researchers around the world.  The more the work is  discoverable, the more likely it is to be cited and shared.

3) Collaborate.  When research is immediately available and allowed to be reused with attribution, the potential opportunities to collaborate, advance, and build on research is increased dramatically.

4) Inform the future. Open access publishing allows everyone to benefit from the research, not just a select group of academicians who have access to expensive journals.  "By increasing visibility and access to research, we can amplify its power to inform, educate, and enlighten."*

*Adapted from PLOS.org "Why Open Access?" accessed March 2021 https://plos.org/open-science/why-open-access/